I am a power user of power banks and have three on rotation throughout the week, retiring about one a year due to burnout.
When UGREEN got in touch to offer a review of their Genshin Impact edition Nexode power bank, I jumped at the chance. It’s the first power bank I’ve had with a digital display to tell me how much juice is left in the brick. Previously, I’d always settled to count lights on the side of the battery, but I can tell you the display makes a big difference. More on that later.
I’ve researched and tested the Nexode in two days, desktop study and some challenging field tests.
Firstly, I couldn’t find anyone else who had tracked the average mAh (milliamperes per hour) over the years, nor worked out whether it’s gotten cheaper. I had to do it myself. To obtain my statistics, I found three popular power banks (from review sites), entered their mAh and cost into a spreadsheet, and normalised the data to calculate the average dollar cost per 10,000 mAh. A mAh score essentially indicates how much energy the battery stores.
As you can see in my chart spanning ten years, the cost of 10,000 mAh has remained incredibly stubborn.
However, in defence of the power pack companies, these batteries have become smaller, recharge faster, and have more ports. Additionally, as is the case with the UGREEN Nexode bank, these devices communicate more effectively. I used to travel with a reader to tell me how much power the smartphone was drawing from the connected USB, but power packs like this make that redundant.
The Genshin Impact power bank I have from UGREEN features a 20,000 mAh capacity with 100W fast charging, allowing you to keep your laptop powered up. The 130W dual-port means you can plug two devices in at once.
The display, which impressed me so, shows a pixel art of K’uhul Ajaw, a dragon from the open-world Genshin Impact RPG, along with real-time power data.
The power bank costs about £75, which is exactly what my desk research suggests it should cost. You can fly with this bank too.
Field testing
The UGREEN Nexode is the fattest power bank I have in rotation now, but not the longest, and it fits into the small pocket of my rucksack.
The green of the power bank speaks to me as I still play Ingress, one of the first augmented reality walking games, parent of the (now divorced) Pokémon Go and perhaps original battery drain. There was once a time you could spot a fellow Ingress player from the way they had their phone as they walked on the street, but now we all do it.
I fight for a better world as one of the Enlightened, we’re green on the Ingress scanner, and UGREEN kept me charged throughout the +Theta challenge. Okay, that’s still going, but I have my GOLD +Theta badge, and did that without going to any events, by putting the UGREEN in my bag and taking it hiking through the Edinburgh rain with me.
I took the UGREEN Nexode to the UK Games Expo, where, as regular readers will know, I covered all four days. That meant working the expo halls from breakfast all the way to kicked-out-NEC time.
Lastly, just this weekend, the UGREEN was my tech partner for Edinburgh’s sci-fi and horror festival, Cymera. I used it to keep my tech alive and charged as I took videos, wrote notes and used my Pixel’s Recorder app.
Conclusions
The UGREEN Nexode is a workhorse that has not let me down. The fact that it’s green is a bonus, as is that it’s anime-branded. I appreciate that there are multiple USB ports, but not an excessive number, and the in/out split makes sense.
The screen is the game changer for me, as I can ensure it’s recharging when I swap it out of my bag at the end of the day, and I can quickly check how much charge is left in it without having to estimate based on whether one, two, or three lights are lit.
Are there any downsides? Well, that dragon pixel animation was cute to start, but sometimes I’m in such a hurry, I want to skip to the real-time data.
Overall? Go green.
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Please note That My UGREEN Nexode Power Bank was provided free of charge for review.
